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posted by n1 on Tuesday March 28 2017, @02:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the good-cop,-bad-cop dept.

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

In January 2013, police raided the home of a Cleveland drug dealer, saying in a search warrant that an informant had recently bought crack cocaine there.

But the drug dealer had surveillance cameras that proved the officers were lying. He gave the tapes to his lawyer, who showed the FBI. The feds then worked to uncover a massive scandal of a rogue street-crimes unit that robbed and framed drug suspects who felt they had no choice but plead guilty to fraudulent charges.

Four years later, authorities are still unwinding the damage.

Three cops who worked for the city of East Cleveland are in prison. Cases against 22 alleged drug dealers have been dismissed. Authorities are searching for another 21 people who are eligible to have their convictions tossed. On top of those injustices, there is a slim chance that any of them will be fully reimbursed, because the disgraced officers and their former employer don't have the money.

Source: NBC News


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  • (Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:38PM (5 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:38PM (#485327)

    If they continued to get away with it, then who'd be next?

    Today he's abusing energy drinks, tomorrow it could be Heroin!

    Yeah I donno man the coverage implies a bunch of cops behaving the same way for a long time.

    Australian Aboriginals are on a different path than us, but you can't predict their future by drawing a vector from us to them and then extending it. Stuff don't work that way. Likewise without any documented evidence to prove it, I think it highly likely this is just how big city Cleveland Cops are, its a life style not a life path.

    It's about some corrupt officers using their power to rob people.

    OK thats VERY interesting.

    What do you propose is their motive? You seem to be claiming private financial gain, like they were taking bribes to put the crooks away or a bounty or just outright stealing. I'd be pretty pissed off if that were the case. But that's the first I've read of anything like that.

    Looks to me like their motive was cleaning up the streets, making Cleveland a little safer for the victims, err, I mean citizens.

    "Protect and Serve" might be said ironically or it might be an obsolete joke. Whatever. To some extent its still "a thing" and on its spectrum if some cops some of the time in Cleveland were a little too motivated on that analog spectrum, making some people a little squeamish, that's not exactly the fall of the roman empire.

    Just because I don't, and don't want to, work in a meat packing plant, doesn't mean I dislike those employees or think they're wrong. They just do stuff different over there, and it seems to work for them, so if I'm a bit squeamish about their antics, that shouldn't matter ... If you don't like watching sausage being made, one interesting solution is to not complain about people making sausage as long as its healthy and tastes good.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:45PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:45PM (#485335)

    So they were acting as vigilantes with all the problems that come with vigilantism.

    I really like Batman, but most of us can tell the difference between fiction and reality. I think you have a problem with that.

    • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by VLM on Tuesday March 28 2017, @06:19PM (1 child)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 28 2017, @06:19PM (#485370)

      they were acting as vigilantes

      A vigilante is a civilian .... acting in a law enforcement capacity... without legal authority.

      No, they were given authority by the local government. AFAIK everyone in trouble is a sworn police officer.

      Sometimes definitions matter ... its like improperly calling a government soldier a spy or a rebel. Actually its like accusing an actual legal and official soldier of being a fake "stolen glory" soldier.

      Vigilante conduct involves certain degrees of violence.

      Not more than the usual amount of resisting arrest type stuff has been claimed.

      a number of cases, vigilantism has involved targets with mistaken identities.

      Um, no? The stories I've read are fairly specific that the "right" career criminals were targeted. We are talking about professional police officers here, not mere vigilantes after all (LOL).

      Vigilantism in literature, folklore and legend is connected to the fundamental issues of dissatisfied morality, injustice, the failures of authority and the ethical adequacy of legitimate governance.

      OK in summary that's Cleveland. That tiny aspect is true and I can see how someone could get slightly confused. Stuff happens. But hearing hooves is not proof of either horse or zebra (although its probably one or the other). If vigilantes were operating in Cleveland that would certainly be why. But this story is about slightly bent cops not vigilantes.

      extrajudicially punished banditry

      AFAIK the career criminals were punished by legally appointed judges not the cops. I know I brought up the "Magnum Force" movie from half a century ago, but these cops were not just gunning down career criminals. Cops usually gun down innocent civilians, usually shooting them in the back, anyway.

      And why is the entire legal system getting off the hook here? Isn't that the idea behind division of powers and stuff? Just one bad apple shouldn't ruin everything? All those judges and prosecutors and juries have the cops as their fall guys which is fairly bogus...

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @06:55PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @06:55PM (#485392)

        You may find this a difficult thing to process, but the cops broke the law. They are criminals.

        I'm not sure, so I figured it was best to ask. Are you familiar with the concept of due process?

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 28 2017, @06:03PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 28 2017, @06:03PM (#485354) Journal

    Today he's abusing energy drinks, tomorrow it could be Heroin!

    Dude, they apparently already committed several dozen felonies concerning this tampering with evidence and theft. That theft requires some elaboration. We have this group stealing $100k from a victim and putting him in jail for two years on false evidence. We have the person who first documented these criminal cops working with the FBI and getting shook down of $3k by one of the officers at a traffic stop while wearing a wire for the FBI.

    We're way beyond abusing energy drinks. These guys were as crooked as a snake.

  • (Score: 2) by Whoever on Tuesday March 28 2017, @06:04PM

    by Whoever (4524) on Tuesday March 28 2017, @06:04PM (#485356) Journal

    You seem to be claiming private financial gain, like they were taking bribes to put the crooks away or a bounty or just outright stealing. I'd be pretty pissed off if that were the case. But that's the first I've read of anything like that.

    How about you READ THE FUCKING ARTICLE? It's right there in black and white. But I guess that doesn't fit into your narrative, so you you have to ignore it:

    His secret recordings caught one of the officers shaking him down for $3,000 during a traffic stop.

    From there, investigators uncovered more frame-ups and thefts. They documented several of them in an October 2015 indictment that charged the rogue unit's commander, Torris Moore, and two underlings, Antonio Malone and Eric Jones, with illegally searching and stealing from alleged drug dealers and faking reports to cover up their crimes.

    The indictment included charges that the officers had arrested an alleged drug dealer identified as K.B. The following day, while K.B. sat in jail, the indictment said, the officers broke into his room at his grandmother's house and took $100,000, keeping a third of it and turning in the rest.